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schwit1 (797399) writes "A super-enriched genetically engineered banana will soon go through its first human trial, which will test its effect on vitamin A levels, Australian researchers said Monday. The project plans to have the special banana varieties — enriched with alpha and beta carotene which the body converts to vitamin A — growing in Uganda by 2020. The bananas are now being sent to the United States, and it is expected that the six-week trial measuring how well they lift vitamin A levels in humans will begin soon."

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED???? That's the boogeyman under the bed!! We must grow organic and all be vegans. If the poor Africans are starving, they just need to go to their local Whole Foods and buy some food.

It's going to happen regardless of what we do, so perhaps it makes more sense to plan for it than it does to impose huge artificial increases on energy costs that ultimately accomplish nothing other than to force down standards of living?

No, no it isn't. Disingenuous is attempting to draw a direct comparison between arguments which are not directly comparable.

the mirror argument for that would be "what's the positive side of loss of biodiversity and creating herbicide resistant pest species (with GMO)?"

No, no it wouldn't. That's the down side. The potential up side of GMO is fairly clear, more and better.

Conservatives who argue about climate change argue that fighting climate change would be problematic, not that climate change itself would be good.

And conservatives who argue about GMO argue that not using GMO would be problematic, because it supposedly fixes problems we're having. It doesn't really, every time we "fix"" a problem with GMO nature shows us that it's already "tried that shit (or something similar) and already has

To explain further. We like to think our favorite political group is more knowledgeable in science then your proponents are, however that isn't the case, both will accept and reject science based on how it goes for or against their political stance.

In General Terms Liberals Look for Problems and try to propose solutions. So if there is anything stated as good they will dig into it to find faults and try to fix them. Now this could be a good thing, as fixing problems tends to make things better... However o

I'd like to hear your practical alternative then. Plant breeding and genetic engineering are not easy, and the deregulation process for GMO crops can cost millions of dollars. If you're volunteering to foot the bill, I'm sure we can do away with plant patents. In the meantime, at the end of this year Monsanto's first GE soybean patent expires, which is how I thought patents were supposed to work (as in, develop something, recoup R&D costs and make profit, invention falls to the public). Copyright my be fucked to high heaven, but this is looking like it works to me, so perhaps you could elucidate the flaw you perceive here.

Also, even non-GMO crops can be patented. Plant breeders and genetic engineers, surprisingly, don't like to work for free. Various stonefruit hybrids (pluots, nectaplums, and plumcots) are patented because they took decades of hard work to develop. The Honeycrisp apple, one of the most popular apples, recently went off patent. The royalties from it went to support the breeding program which later produced my favorite apple variety, the SnowSweet apple (the world might not have that apple without patents). There are patented pineapples (like the Mele Kalima variety, which is one of the most amazing fruits I've ever had) and pawpaws (like the Shenandoah variety) developed by very small operations simply to protect the developer's work. A lot of the ornamental and floriculture industry uses plant patents. So tell me, if if those of us in plant improvement cannot patent our work, what do you propose as a fair system for all?

How about this, a compromise: You create a GMO strain of a plant, great, go ahead and patent it. If I replicate your patented strain and sell the seed, sue me. If I happen to be growing a similar plant, downwind of a neighboring farm that grows your strain, and the resultant seed from that contains some of the genetic material from your strain, then sue nature because I didn't do that shit.

For one, I never said Monsanto has ever sued anyone over cross-pollination; that said, don't be fooled by Mansanto's own claim that they don't take legal action against farmers [monsanto.com]. They specifically state they've never sued over "trace amounts" and state that the courts have acknowledged that they've never once sued, or threatened to sue, an organic farm. This is a far cry from claiming it's never happened, which they simply can't do, because it has [wordpress.com]. And they won.

They have also sued, and continue to sue, for seed-reuse [monsanto.com]. That is, buying more seed than you'll use this year and using the excess next year, or harvesting and using seed produced by Mansanto-seeded crop. I can't fault them for suing farmers who harvest and replant after signing an agreement stating that they will not do this, but then I ask, how do they determine whether the seed was stores or harvested? Simply put, they can't, and the result is suing people for storing seed.

Remember, if it happens just once, you can no longer say it doesn't happen. It's doubly-bad for one's reputation to not only do something others will disapprove of, but then to slyly attempt to convince them that it never happened in the first place. Mansanto has done just this, and the fact that they're full of shit is a matter of public record, so yes, I'm going to call them out on it.

Part of the contract with Monsanto should be a buyback program. If the farmer has seed left over, say 30 days after the purchase, he can get a refund. 30 days shouldn't be enough time for most crops to go to seed but should be enough time to plant the crops. The point is that Monsanto should have a fair, for the farmer, program in place to prevent seed storage. If they have this, then they are on more solid moral grounds in suing farmers under contract for seed reuse and/or harvesting. Today, I'm willi

How many liberals faking scientific literacy making that argument do you see on slashdot? Global warming denialism is more endemic to American conservatives than any of the commonly cited stereotypes about liberals.

That's not to say we deny the existence or alignment of the idiots, but we do know they're idiots.

The fact you just pulled that statistic out of your butt speaks volumes more about you than it does any hypothetical "liberals". You look like a knee-jerk muppet conjuring stereotypes of your self-perceived enemies out of thin air in order to berate them in order to appease your own faltering self-image. Weird.

The funny thing is that we already have a suitable super food in this area. Creating it did not require Frankenstein style genetic meddling. It has just as long of a shelf life as bananas if not greater. It's especially easy to preserve for long periods.

Of course it has the sin of being something you can't patent or get a monopoly on.

Because the argument that GMOs are these evil terrible things that you should totally give us your money to fight is going to be a harder sell once you've got news stories talking about how they are saving the lives of children whose only crime was being born in the wrong part of the world. Golden Rice is a big [greenpeace.org] deal to [navdanya.org]many [organicconsumers.org] in the anti-GMO movement, which just goes to show you how little the 'not anti-biotech just anti-Monsanto' line goes.

Yeah, the actual argument used against this kind of GMO use is that it would cost the same to treat the root cause of the problem by teaching people to grow a wider range of crops and the importance of a balanced diet, rather than this stop-gap solution that provides no long-term change (they're still not eating a balanced diet) and makes people reliant on western industrial food conglomerates with extremely poor human rights records.

I mean, have hippies even started protesting this? I realize that straw man arguments about "Africans should just go to whole foods" is sometimes all one can contribute, and sometimes mods don't want to read more than two posts down before dumping their points, but fucking hell, come on slashdot.

And it IS a fucking strawman argument. We all know (or should know) that no bit of technology is completely benign. By focusing on the most idiotic of criticisms, that might make us feel smart and also make us feel better about the technology, but we're drowning out actual concerns. Look at golden rice which did the beta carotene thing first [wikipedia.org]. Yes yes, greenpeace blah blah blah, ignore that little section. There are concerns about whether it will affect the fertility of the soil. Perhaps that's not a concern with bananas, I don't know, maybe some agriculturally-leaning slashdotter could pipe in after the obligatory "fuck GMO protesting hippies."

See? It's entirely possible for people to have more concerns than "OMG, scary frankenfoods!" I'm not a hippie. I don't have a solution though. I mean, do they have whole foods there? Because if they did have a whole foods, that would probably be a better solution than potentially creating this [cpcache.com]. (kidding)

Bottom line, ignore the lunatic fringes in any controversey. It's fun to point and laugh at idiots, but you'll usually ignore the more reasonable people who might be on that side of the argument, those reasonable people might be right, in which case, you'd take second place in the idiot contest.

Not yet, far as I know, but since every GMO that has ever made it close to commercialization has been protested, I don't see why this should be any different.

And it IS a fucking strawman argument.

It would be if there were not first world activists who actually think that the poorest people on earth should just go buy some healthier foods. There is a reason why people who have made it their life's work to combat starvation and malnutrition are taking the route of Golden Rice and other biofortified crops (and it must also be said that the non-GMO biofortified crops escape all the controversy, almost as if the arguments against the GMO ones have nothing to do with their actual properties and everything to do with an irrational bias against their origin)

There are concerns about whether it will affect the fertility of the soil.

No, there aren't. Genetic engineering is not a black box. I don't see how beta carotene production is going to impact the soil. Sounds like a bullshit claim some clueless anti-GMO activist pulled out the usual place. I highly doubt this rice will be any different than any other rice, on average, in terms of soil impact.

ignore the lunatic fringes in any controversey

If we do that then there is no controversy. This is like creationism, or vaccine rejection. You can reject certain phylogeny, or take issue with particular vaccines, and you can make valid criticisms about certain aspects of some GMOs, but the movements as a whole are without merit.

Poor people are fact because they CANT eat properly. I suggest you look at the price of real unprocessed meat and veggies as well as hole grain breads.

Poor people buy the $1.25 garbage white bread instead of the $3.00 a loaf whole grain.They buy Ramen, that is utter crap for nutrition.They buy prepackaged garbage because it's cheaper, a LOT cheaper.They buy the lowest grade of meat, typically hamburger in a tube that is 50% fat, hooves and tripe.

Veggies are expensive, $1.00 iceberg lettuce that is complete crap instead of the $4.00 Romaine lettuce.

DOUBLE the poor persons food budget and they can start to eat better. Also put a big ass tax on Fast food places that sell utter crap like McDonalds and Taco Bell. They prey on the poor with their $1.00 menu.

People who go for instant gratification cut school, walk out on the job when they get mad, and eat Oreos. People who think though the long-term effects of their decisions work their way through college, bite their tongue and discuss problems when calm, eat fruits and vegetables, and exercise - even though they don't WANT to do those things I.the moment, they think long term.

Short-term thinking results in a person being poor and unhealthy. Long term thinking tends to lead to financial success and a healthy lifestyle. I have done, and still do, some of both. I worked late last night, and I'm headed in to my high-paying job, where I'll work hard at serving the needs of the organization. First, I'm going to finish smoking this cigarette. I know each of those choices will probably effect me five years from now.

Hogwash. Sure, you can cherry pick healthy items that are expensive, but there are also plenty of healthy foods that are cheap: carrots, oatmeal, peanut butter, eggs, etc. You don't need endive and romaine lettuce to be healthy. "Society" is not forcing people to consume soda and french fries. Soda is cheaper than fruit juice, but tap water is even cheaper. There are plenty of food options that are both healthy and affordable.

Poor neighborhoods, Dr. Lee found, had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile.

Dr. Sturm found no relationship between what type of food students said they ate, what they weighed, and the type of food within a mile and a half of their homes.

And even if it were true that many grocery stores in poor neighborhoods don't have a load of high-quality fresh produce choices (the main thing always brought up about "food deserts," if they exist), even the crappy urban grocery stores I've been in will often have "family packs" of cheap frozen veggies and such, or at least large cans of vegetables and fruit. It's not the best stuff on the planet, but the idea that the only thing available is McDonald's, boxes of donuts, and bags of chips is generally more of a myth than reality.

DOUBLE the poor persons food budget and they can start to eat better. Also put a big ass tax on Fast food places that sell utter crap like McDonalds and Taco Bell. They prey on the poor with their $1.00 menu.

Err, dude - there's a bit of tautology in that quoted bit up there... taxing MickeyD's won't help the poor stretch their food budget.

You're giving ramen a bad name when it really doesn't deserve it. By ITSELF, ramen is crap for nutrition because like most Asian noodles it's made of wheat flour and water and very little else. What very few people outside of Japan understand is that ramen is not like spaghetti - the noodles are not the entire meal, though they are a focus of the meal. Eating the noodles by themselves is like eating slices of bread by themselves.

The point of ramen is that as a food that contains very little besides wheat flour and water, it can go with nearly anything. There are entire restaurants in Japan dedicated to ramen, using it as a base and adding other things to provide nutrition - beef, chicken, pork, vegetables, fish, shrimp. I've seen ramen as a pizza topping, pizza as a ramen topping (see slowbeef's original Let's Play of SNATCHER and the people on SA who tried making "Neo Kobe Pizza"), pizza made of ramen, and pretty much any other combination of Italian-Japanese hybrid cuisine you can think of (though I have yet to see someone attempt a spaghetti-ramen fusion with meatballs and sauce).

So no, ramen is actually a decent option on a budget if you know what you're doing with it.

For third world people, "If you are poor, go to McDonalds" is akin to "Let them eat cake" [wikipedia.org] - which is to say it doesn't reflect the reality of the poor in third world countries. In many of those countries, fast food such as McDonalds and bread are luxury items and a dollar's worth will stretch a lot further when spent at the market.

Look at the TV imagery showing poor African families - ever see any fat people in there? I

Consider that you only have $10 to feed your family, and just came off-shift at your minimum-wage job.

You can either buy:- a McMeal on the way home from work (they have some sort of deal going now where you can get 4 burgers, some fries, and 4 soft drinks for $9.99)- a couple of Pepperoni Little Caesars' pizzas, again on the way home from work- burn $5 or so in gas to get proper food at the nearest decent grocery store 10 miles away, and spend an extra $8 doing that- spend $15 at inflated prices for nutritious food (though it's slightly old) at the nearest bodega/grocer/phone-card/payday-loan store,- buy two heads of organic free-range vegan-gods-approved broccoli for $8 at the nearest Whole Payche... err, "Foods" roughly 15 miles away (burning $5-6 in gas)- Wait until Thursday, where you can drive 20 miles to the Farmers' Market in the ritzy part of town and spend $25 for that same family meal.

Thing is, most poor neighborhoods usually don't have decent grocery stores. Why? Because most grocers don't like losing shedloads of money due to food-stamp/EBT fraud, shoplifting, robberies, etc. This means what groceries do make it there are either non-fresh, at highly inflated prices (to offset the aforementioned losses), preserved-all-to-hell in cans or boxes, or at a very limited selection. Or, you can save on cooking and grab some fast food, like most folks do, and as a bonus the kids don't bitch and moan as much about eating it.

Or someone in that poor family could, once in a while, take a bike and go to a decent grocery store

True story -- some years back, I lived a few blocks from one of the cheapest grocery stores in a large city. The local chain had its priorities straight: they made money off of volume, rather than off of profit margin on individual items. Thus, the aisles were full of people from the time it opened until the time it closed, 14 hours every day of the week. It had quality food (much better than the average supermarkets in the richer parts of town, because the produce for example moved so quickly instead of

You can pick two. For the poor the "Cheap" option is already mandated, so essentially it comes down to Healthy or Tastes Good. Unfortunately most tend to go with better tasting food over the healthier food.

As someone who grew up poor, I can tell you first-hand that pricing and neighborhood conditions conspire nicely to prevent you from eating anything that isn't processed to within an inch of its existence, or isn't basically crap food.

I think the only exception I've seen is the heavily Latino neighborhoods, where, against most odds, the local Mexican grocers and meat markets actually do provide decent and fairly nutritious foods ("fresh" is still a trial to get, but at least it's better than the local Mickey D's.)

I think the only exception I've seen is the heavily Latino neighborhoods, where, against most odds, the local Mexican grocers and meat markets actually do provide decent and fairly nutritious foods ("fresh" is still a trial to get, but at least it's better than the local Mickey D's.)

Yes, and the best part about the Latino neighborhoods is that even the large grocery discounters there don't use "club cards". You go to the Barrio, you get an honest deal, priced as marked. Very often staples were priced c

No, becasue the only food they can afford is salt laden fatty food.Remember most pore people work full time jobs and still are at the poverty line. So no time, and not money, and limited education.

Bullshit. Have you seen how cheap dried beans and rice are? There's a complete protein right there. Add in some relatively cheap fruits and veggies like apples, lettuce, and carrots and you have a far healthier and far cheaper diet than McDonalds and packaged pre-prepared foods.

I know it is hard to believe, but all the things you take for granted are not automatic birthrights to everybody.
a pot
a working stove
a working sink
a working fridge
cultural desire to eat "healthy"
accessible groceries
time and energy to cook
working knowledge of cooking food or the ability and knowledge to look up how to do it
a safe place to cook
room in your budget to screw up cooking a few times without going hungry
assumption that you can even afford to have a "budget" at all
an educational background that includes knowing WHAT things are more nutritious than others.

It is cheap as hell for someone who already front-loaded the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars worth of real expenses that go into cooking a healthy meal.

I can cook a meal for my family for 5 bucks, but I interact with my $200,000 house (in a safe neighborhood with grocery stores), my $900 fridge, my $30,000 car, $1,000 worth of cookware, and 6 hours of non-work non-sleep time between when I get off work and when I need to work again. Have I done it with less? Sure, I lived at poverty levels when I had my first apartment and was in school. But I already had years of privilege at that point, which taught me how to do the things I knew how to do.

The majority of Starvation and poverty happen in areas where adults can't report the problem. Immigrant families and those with warrants. They'd rather starve than get sent to jail, so they starve. It happens far more often than you think it does because it goes almost totally unreported.

Every city over 30k people in this country has a food bank.You think these organizations do all this work for the hell of it?I grow and can large amounts of produce myself to donate.It shouldn't be possible to starve in this country, but it happens every day.

Been watching a little too much Penn and Teller? Starving Africans? In which country are Africans starving?

I've been there... all of them. Your life totally changes when there are hundreds of people standing in front of you starving to death and there's nothing you can do about it despite knowing you have boxes of crackers back home going stale that could literally save a life. I watched people eat garbage.

Isn't the banana population under serious threat because of monoculture? I remember the current banana cultivar - the Cavendish - is under threat because of lack of disease resistance because of monoculture. The previous well used cultivar, the Gros Michel, was replaced because it lost to a disease threat - also due to monoculture. The article didn't mention anything about plant disease resistance.

TELL ME ABOUT IT. There are about 400 varieties of bananas in India and those Pasty Limeys picked only one, the Cavendish, to grow everywhere else around the world. No wonder we're talking about the whole crop being very prone to one disease wiping all global stock of bananas.

It's because bananas without seeds are clonally propagated. It's not just monoculture, it's a single clonal organism. However, people tend to like them without seeds. Otherwise you go from peeling bananas to smashing them and frying them up (because uncooked is just too difficult to eat).

For a disturbing read, take a look at the new alliance's co-operation frameworks with countries. Mozambique, for example, is committed to "systematically ceasing to distribute free and unimproved [non-commercial] seeds to farmers except in emergencies". The new alliance will lock poor farmers into buying increasingly expensive seeds – including genetically modified seeds – allow corporate monopolies in seed selling, and escalate the loss of precious genetic diversity in seeds – absolutely key in the fight against hunger. It will also open the door to genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa by stopping farmers' access to traditional local varieties and forcing them to buy private seeds.

File this under donotwant. Unlike most vitamins, A is not water soluble and can build up to toxic levels in the body. Of special importance to Africans is that it also makes the body more susceptible to sun burns.

"The consequences of vitamin A deficiency are dire with 650,000-700,000 children world-wide dying... each year and at least another 300,000 going blind," he said.

I don't think they have to worry about toxic levels. Esp since toxic levels are 1500IU *per kilo*. So, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 bananas per meal, 3x per day. And then they might get to toxic levels.

Aside from considerations against or pro GMO, the bigger problem of all is that in Africa, besides bananas being (cheap) staple to millions, there are hundreds of natural variations, and their natural diversity is astounding. Besides this, lets not forget the Gros Michel was wiped out by a global disease, and the Cavendish seems headed the same way. There is also issues about cross-pollination with the local species. Seems a very misguided idea to mess with that.

So the "super" in these bananas is extra Vitamin A (alpha and beta carotene). But in general this solves nothing because those people who are Vitamin A deficient probably can't afford the bananas and/or don't have the resources to grow them... if they did they could just as easily grow (for example) Papayas which grow in the same conditions as Bananas and have more than enough beta carotene without any GM tricks. The problem is that both Bananas and Papayas need very fertile soil (or lots of fertilizer) and plenty of water to grow.

The problem of Vitamin A dificiency may be real enough, but to really solve it you have to first look at the root of the problem. Why are people Vitamin A deficient? Were they always or is there something new happening? In Uganda for example I suspect that it's because people used to get their beta carotene from unprocessed red palm oil which they used to extract themselves and used for all their cooking, and now they are using processed cooking oils which are cheap enough that they just don't bother extracting their own oil anymore but which have all the beta carotene removed! So the problem was created by modern consumer society in the first place! The best solution here is just a bit of education, because the unprocessed red palm oil is probably still available and inexpensive and people have just gotten out the habit of using it. Just tell them to go back to frying their non-GM bananas in red palm oil instead of processed oil and they'll stop being Vitamin A deficient in no time.

In general, people who eat traditional diets are rarely deficient in such important nutrients as Vitamin A unless they simply don't have enough to eat overall. But people are losing their traditional diets due to the relentless onslought of consumerism... for those populations the cheapest and most effective solution to Vitamin A deficiency is education and making sure traditional sources of beta carotine continue to be available. For those who are deficient because of extreme poverty the super bananas (or the golden rice, another frankenfood ultra-solution) solve nothing unless you give them away, in which case you can give away non-GM sources of beta carotene just as easily.

I live in a very similar place (Bahia in Brazil, which has a mostly African derived culture), and we have the same bananas here. I assure you that they are not the primary calorie source, although they may be a prominent part of the diet. In any case to get those GM bananas into the hands of the people who currently eat the non-GM bananas you're going to have to organize a huge logistical operation of producing millions of GM banana offshoots (remember that bananas have no seeds, they are all clon

Probably most if not all current GMO food crops do not damage human health.

However, in the abstract, you are engineering (almost arbitrarily modifying) organisms capable of spontaneous reproduction and proliferation, so the level of precautionary principle needed is commensurate with "would it be ok if this escaped into the wild and took over ecosystem niches from more naturally evolved or incrementally bred crops / organisms? Do we have an accurate model of what would happen in that case? Have we tested enough to verify that model? And every case of a different manipulation or in a different organism is different so requires repetition of extensive testing."

The types of risks there run the gamut from destruction of wild varieties and species by competition from the GMO. Substantial alteration of ecosystem by shifting the balance of successful and unsuccessful organisms. Proliferation of and reliance on a GMO monoculture which is then subject to rapid destruction from a single pathogen. etc. etc. Ecological system effects in other words. Very hard to test for.

Again, it will probably be all be fine, until one day when it won't. When something unanticipated will happen and, well, the genie is out of the bottle and doesn't fit back in.

At a minimum, GMO food should be labelled as such, and let people decide for themselves and vote with their pocketbook.

It can be racist depending on how it is offered. It is because of the association with ancesters racist trot forward in their attemps to dehumanize the black population. Of course they put it differently and i'm trying to not be offensive in my wording. The same is said and used with fried chicken and water melon in the US because of historically utilitarian reasons (chicken was cheap to a poor population and like its name suggests, water melon contains a lot of water which is a neccesity in fields on hot d